The Importance Of Being Earnest, By Oscar Wilde

Love is a fickle thing. Likewise, the portrayal of such a feeling in literature and media can be just as dynamic. Some pieces of literature represent love as a part of life in the sense that one does not live without experiencing love. On the other hand though, love is just as often made a mockery of; it’s depicted as a useless feeling that only distracts people from logic and rational thinking. In The Importance of Being Earnest, a play by Oscar Wilde set in Victorian England, love is mocked which is evident in Cecily’s lust for Ernest, Gwendolen’s love for the name Ernest and Algernon’s ideas of marriage. Wilde’s parodying of love is obvious when Cecily falls in love with Ernest, Jack’s fictitious younger brother. Jack uses Ernest as an excuse to leave his obligations in the town and enjoy himself in the city, saying that Ernest is in trouble that Jack is required to go bail him out of, thus becoming “the chief topic of conversation between [Cecily] and Miss Prism. And of
At the beginning of the play, Algernon claims he doesn’t “see anything romantic in proposing” (1.85-86) but when he has ‘fallen in love’ with Cecily he asks if she will “marry [him]” (2.536), contradicting his previous opinions on marriage. The playwright presents the readers with the idea that love will cause one to do something normally out of one’s actions, in this case, get married even though Algernon is clearly opposed to the idea. One can argue that he simply found his soulmate and is certain he wants to spend his life with Cecily, but it’s not realistic to be in love with someone with only one brief encounter; it’s hardly enough time to love someone as a person. At this stage in time, one can only be infatuated with the physical appearance of one. This once again ties back to the skewed perception of love Wilde embodies with The Importance of Being